3 November 2014

Frédéric Andrau: Monsieur Albert: Cossery, une vie (2013)

An old man sits in front of Saint-Sulpice fountain, perhaps in the middle or at the end of his daily walk: starting from his hotel La Louisiane in rue de Seine, moving to the cafés Flore and Lipp on the Boulevard Saint Germain, to the jardin du Luxembourg and then back to the hotel. At all these places, of course, he sits for hours and hours just thinking – or should that be watching the young girls go by.

Frédéric Andrau's book – which includes some whimsical details and addresses its subject Albert Cossery (1913–2008) throughout as 'vous' – is the first biographical interpretation of the writer's life, and its publication marks the centenary of his birth.

It begins with a quotation by Cossery as a epigraph, which pretty much sums up the writer's work and ethos, and which I translate as:

'I am an aristocratic anarchist because I believe that humankind, apart from women, doesn't amount to much. But I'll always be on the side of the little people, never on that of the bastards and if, after reading my books, you don't know who the bastards are then you've not understood a thing.'

It's fairly well known that Cossery – who adopted French as his language – was born in Egypt, moved to France in 1945 and stayed there, spending almost all the time there in hotel rooms and only managing to write eight (fairly brief) books. His father had lived off his lands and rents from his properties and so didn't actually work, and Cossery too scarcely ever worked: after a short time working on a transatlantic ship, he said – after settling in Paris – that he only wrote about a sentence a week towards his books.

Andrau doesn't spend a great deal of time praising Cossery, who some of the time comes across as an egotistical sponger – gate-crashing the literary scene at first in search of anyone who'll buy him a meal, etc. He married once (Monique Chaumette) and didn't even live with her: he preferred to have sex with her in his hotel room when he woke up in the afternoon after evenings and early mornings having a good time (often at others' expenses); when, after several years, his wife announced that the party (or at least the marriage) was over he said it had come at a wrong time as the monthly hotel bill needed paying: if that was a joke, it wasn't a good one. But when Cossery years later inadvertently met his ex-wife with her second husband Philippe Noiret, he actually shed tears: was that because he'd let his guard slip and forgot to hide his true feelings behind his usual mask of insouciance?

If all this sounds like a story of a writer not writing, well it is in part,

although he does meet a number of writing friends, such as Henry Miller, Albert Camus, Lawrence Durrell, Roger Nimier (whose politics I'm pleased to learn Cossery didn't like), Louis Guilloux, etc. And Cossery's work is later recognised in the form of three literary prizes – the first carrying the significant award of 400,000 francs in 1991.

Towards the end of the story I warmed a lot more to Cossery, and not just because he's growing older, undergoing illnesses and therefore more sympathetic. There was something more: the now eighty-seven-year-old meets a young girl follower: the Belgian photographer Sophie Leys – who is anonymous in the body of the book – and Cossery agrees to have her publish a book of her photos of Egypt followed by extracts from Cossery's books that they chose together: L'Égypte de Cossery (2004). Furthermore, Andrau mentions the short film Leys made: Une vie dans la journée d'Albert Cossery: this I had to check out.

Digression: Ley's thirty-two minute film is well worth seeing even if you don't speak French. It shows Cossery in Luxembourg, in his hotel room, in cafés (such as Brasserie Lipp), and contains comments on him by, for instance, Michel Piccoli, Joëlle Losfeld, Georges Moustaki, Roger Grenier and Frédéric Beigbeder. Age has not softened his ideas, and he emphatically states – barely speaking and partly using sign language after a pharyngotomy – that less people vote now because we no longer live in a democracy: the bastards are the only ones profiting from the situation.

Near the end he was mainly writing on pieces of paper to communicate, and this sentence is beautiful: 'La télévision participe à un complot mondial destiné à éradiquer l'intelligence sur toute la planète': 'Television is part of a world plot to destroy intelligence throughout the planet.' Lovely. A link to the film is here.

But (briefly) back to Monsieur Albert: thanks to Frédéric Andrau, I now feel that all my questions about this remarkable writer have been answered. Andrau goes about it in an original way which is really effective.

On the negative side, this book is in need of an Index. There are also several indications of sloppy proof-reading: Fegallah or Feggallah? Both versions are used on pp. 14 and 15 respectively; it's Sunsiaréde Larcône, not Sunsarié (p. 109); on p. 226 Les Couleurs de l'Infamie is called Cossery's eight novel, whereas it's his seventh: Les Hommes oubliés de Dieu is a collection of short stories; Andrau writes of the book L'Égypte d'Albert Cossery, but it's in fact called L'Égypte de Cossery and was published in 2001, not 2004 as he states; on p. 252 Andrau says Cossery spent sixty years in one hotel room, when he's already said that he moved from Montmartre to La Louisiane in 1952 (p. 67), and also on pp. 182–83 there is mention of a room change from 58 to 77.

Britaine

Slump, by Will Self

Gallia – Ménie Muriel Dowie

Gallia (1895) is a rather obscure novel which emphatically belongs to the New Woman sub-genre, and concerns a young intellectual woman who refuses to comply with the prevailing gender constructs: this is a Victorian woman with spunk.

Westering Women

Chancy develops the theory of culture-lacune, a revolutionary strategy by means of which Haitian women writers both celebrate and fight the absence and the loss which has been the female voice in the history of the country. In Haitian women writers, a folkloric figure is used as a tool: they 'reformulate the marabout eternalized in Oswald Durand's still popular folksong "Choucoune" of 1883.' Whereas Durand's Choucoune is a figure of betrayal who stands for a lost Haiti, the women writers transform her and reclaim her for themselves. Some writers included in this study are Anne–christine d'Adesky, Ghislaine Charlier, Marie Chauvet, Jan J. Dominique, Nadine Magloire, Edwidge Danticat, and the earlier writers Virgile Valcin, and Annie Desroy.

The Clansman – Thomas Dixon

The Marrow of Tradition – Charles W. Chesnutt

At the end of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), the black Dr Miller enters the house of the white Carteret family in an attempt to save the life of their young child. Previously, Major Carteret had not allowed Miller to tend to his son because Miller is black, and Miller's own young son has just died in a skirmish instigated by the Major himself. Clearly, Chesnutt's focus of interest is not on the fate of the white family's son, but on the integrity of Dr Miller. The novel is set 'Wellington', although there are parallels between this fictional town and Wilmington, North Carolina, which was the scene of a 'race riot' in 1898. Dr Miller represents the 'New Negro', the educated, ambitious and socially aware black person beginning to emerge through many years of slavery in the Southern states, through the subservience of Uncle Tomism, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and now through the appalling compromise of the Jim Crow laws in the South.* Most of all, though, all black people have to battle against a wall of prejudice that still exists, where whites not only segregate and bar, but are only too eager, particularly via lynching, to apply the rule of the mob. The book is a kind of thriller and obviously is influenced by many Victorian novels that have gone before it (and there is an unfortunate strong touch of melodrama towards the end), but it is evident that the novel's main purpose is didactic. *Along with T. S. Stribling's Birthright and Chesnutt's own Mandy Oxendine, there is a scene in which the segregation of blacks from whites on a train takes place.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt

I approached this book, which Edmund White calls a 'non-fiction novel', with some caution because of its great popularity: I'm generally very suspicious of books that are popular. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and also surprised that it has in fact proved so popular, as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is hardly a conventional novel. It's a love affair John Berendt had with Savannah, Georgia, and which brought a stream of tourists into the city in search of the human and architectural sights mentioned, such as Bonaventure Cemetery (where the poet Conrad Aiken's bench grave stands), or perhaps a sighting of Savannah's larger-than-life characters, like 'female impersonator' The Lady Chablis, or hope for an invitaton to a party such as the ones thrown by Joe Odom, the highly likeable con merchant. These characters move around the main story, which is the murder of the priapic Danny Hansford by his employer and occasional lover, the antique furniture dealer Jim Williams, who lived in the impressive Mercer House, the former home of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The novel is funny and fast-moving, but there is a structural problem: it is too episodic, and although the murder and subsequent trials are the central issue, the colourful characters who flit in and out of it somehow don't merge too well with this central interest.

Life in the Iron-Mills - Rebecca Harding Davis

First published in 1861 and based on the experiences of Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) in Wheeling, Virginia, which is today in West Virginia, Life in the Iron-Mills is now seen as a seminal work of American realism. This short story, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, was her masterpiece, and was rediscovered by Tillie Olsen, who wrote an Afterword to the Feminist Press edition in 1972.

Birthright - T. S. Stribling

See post for comment (using the 'SEARCH BLOG' facility to the top left of the page).

Feather Crowns - Bobbie Ann Mason

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg

In Country - Bobbie Ann Mason

Mandy Oxendine - Charles W. Chesnutt

This novel was originally written towards the close of the 19th century, and was in fact the first novel Chesnutt wrote. However, The House behind the Cedars (1900) was his first published novel, and it would be 100 years after Mandy Oxendine was written that it was in fact published. This is the story of two mixed race lovers - both of whom could pass for white - Mandy and Tom Lowrey, who part for two years while Tom goes off to educate himself. When he comes back, it is to work in a school for black children, while Mandy is in a white school passing herself as white. Tom's problem is that Mandy now believes that she is in love with the rich womanizer Robert Utley, although the novel develops into a thriller - almost a whodunnit - when Utley is killed when attempting to sexually assault Mandy. A tale of race, class and gender conflict, Mandy Oxendine was considered too daring for publication at the time it was written.

Anitfanaticism: A Tale of the South, by Martha Haines Butt

An anti-Tom novel, and the only novel by this author.

Dorothy Allison – Bastard out of Carolina

Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

Starting at Zero: Black Mountain College 1933-57

Fremsley (1987) – Ivor Cutler

A collection of poems, musings and observations from the eccentric Glaswegian Ivor Cutler, a man who was admired by people of all ages. When The New Musical Express once asked him how he would spend Christmas, he said in bed, with the bedclothes pulled around him until it went away. The most notable in the collection: 'A Strategy Suit with a Jelly Pocket'.

The Autobiography of Samuel Bamford: Volume Two: Passages in the Life of a Radical

Roger Vailland: the Man and His Masks – J. E. Flower

Mrs Caldwell Speaks to Her Son (1953; trans. 1968) – Camilo José Cela

Originally published as Mrs. Caldwell habla a su hijo.

Her (1960) – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti is best known as the co-founder of the City Lights bookstore and publisher on Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, which published Allen Ginsberg's first book of poems, Howl, in 1956. Ferlinguettti's most well known work is A Coney Island of the Mind (1960). The bookstore is recommended, as is the pub Vesuvio's next door to it (with Jack Kerouac Alley between), which is a kind of shrine to the Beat Generation.

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937) – Oliver St John Gogarty

Oliver St John Gogarty is perhaps best remembered for his relationship with James Joyce. A former drinking partner of Joyce's in the early years, Gogarty later became the butt of Joyces insults. In Joyce's early poem 'The Holy Office', Gogarty is represented as a snob, and more famously, there is another representation at the beginning of Ulysses (‘stately plump Buck Mulligan’) in the Martello tower: Joyce had stayed with Gogarty in the Martello tower at Sandy Cove.

The Days Before – Katherine Anne Porter

Critical essays from the Texan noted for her short stories Flowering Judas (1930) and Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), and for her novel Ship of Fools (1962)

The American 1930s: A Literary History – Peter Conn

Interesting for its inclusion of a number of obscure writers.

A Feast of Snakes (1976) – Harry Crews

Harry Crews is one of the wild men of literature. Of working-class origin, Crews writes about the underbelly of America, of drugs, alcohol abuse, and trailer park communities in the Deep South, for instance. He was born in southern Georgia but has spent most of his life in Florida. The problem is perhaps that he also spent too long parodying himself, and it can make us forget his undoubted importance as a serious writer. This is a link to a youtube interview, in which he boasts of spending 30 years of his life drunk every day, and illustrates this problem very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpeFmXJG4Ak.

Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936 Anne Goodwyn Jones

How Late It Was, How Late (1994) - James Kelman

James Kelman - H. Gustav Klaus

James Kelman - Simon Kövesi

The most comprehensive critical work on Kelman so far, although it was published too late to include his latest novel, Kieron Smith, Boy.

Translated Accounts - James Kelman

A Disaffection - James Kelman

The Ticket That Exploded - William Burroughs

Festus: A Poem - Philip J. Bailey

A plaque on a building on the north corner of Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement, Nottingham, UK, reveals that the writer Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) once lived there. Bailey was born in Nottingham and educated in Glasgow, and is usually associated with the Spasmodic school of poetry along with J. W. Marston, S. T. Dobell, and Alexander Smith. He is most noted for Festus, a huge work to which Bailey was continually adding, and which was heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost. Its most famous lines are: 'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; / In feeling, not in figures on a dial / We should count time by theart throbs; he most lives / Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.' There is a bronze bust of Bailey by Albert Toft at the rear entrance to Nottingham Castle.

The Life and Times of Thomas Spence P. M. Ashraf

The Kretzmer Syndrome - Peter Way

The Withered Root (1929) - Rhys Davies

My Wales - Rhys Davies

Soldier Songs - Patrick Macgill

Skerrett - Liam O'Flaherty

A Pig in a Poke - Rhys Davies

The Home-Maker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Half an Eye: Sea Stories - James Hanley

The Contradictions - Zulfikar Ghose

The Death of Christopher - John Sommerfield

Boy James Hanley

Rhys Davies: A Critical Sketch - R. L. Mégroz

Ellen Glasgow - Barren Ground

The Back-to-Backs (1930) - J. C. Grant

A real obscurity. When it was published, this book – which depicts life in a mining community – was roundly attacked for what was considered to be a brutal attack on the life of miners. Very little is known of Grant, who also wrote poems, although his birth certificate reveals that he was born in Alnwick, Northumbria, to a father who was an author, newspaper editor, and manager.

Trouble dans les Andains - Boris Vian

Spacetime Inn - Lionel Britton

Senselessness - Horacio Castellanos Moya

Le Rivage des Syrtes - Julien Gracq

Rhinocéros - Eugène Ionesco

The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien

Out Such Between Through Christine Brooke-Rose

A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis

Caligrammes - Guillaume Apollinaire

Belle du Seigneur - Albert Cohen

Plays, Poems and Theatre Writings - Joe Corrie

Trouble in Porter Street - John Sommerfield

Men Adrift - Anthony Bertram

Truly Obscure. A novel about philosopher and a writer who meet on a boat. They talk.